Click Here to Read: Lacking Rules, Insurers Balk at Paying for Intensive Psychiatric Care by Reed Abelson in The New York Times on this website.
Letter by Susan G. Lazar:
In disagreement with Reed Abelson’s defense of insurance company violations of the Mental Health Parity Act prohibiting discrimination in benefits for psychiatric illness: “Unlike some physical ailments for which there are reams of utilization review studies suggesting a relatively clear standard of care, there is often little accepted medical evidence to support the range of treatments for many mental illnesses.”
In fact, a robust medical literature demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of psychotherapy for major psychiatric conditions, documented in
Psychotherapy Is Worth It: A Comprehensive Review of Its Cost-Effectiveness, and summarized at _www.ourgap.org_ (http://www.ourgap.org/) under News, attests psychotherapy as highly cost-effective for serious psychiatric conditions, as at times the first-line treatment and augmenting psychotropic medication. Multiple research studies show that patients with personality disorders, psychoses, substance abuse, chronic anxiety, depression, and severely ill children most need intensive psychotherapy, and are extremely costly to society in increased medical costs and disability if inadequately treated.
Susan G. Lazar, M.D.
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
Georgetown University School of Medicine
George Washington University School of Medicine
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
Supervising and Training Analyst, Washington Psychoanalytic Institute
Editor and Co-Author, Psychotherapy Is Worth It: A Comprehensive Review of Its Cost-Effectiveness, 2010.
9104 Quintana Drive, Bethesda, MD, 20817
Tel: 301 365-0373 Fax: 301 365-3240 sglmd@aol.com